Also driving the delay is concern among water officials that a new proposal for water rate hikes is causing the public to mistakenly link the increase with the proposed $105 million desal project.

“The rate increase has nothing to do with desalination,” said Cynthia Koehler, a Marin Municipal Water District board member. “The rate increase has to do with the district remaining solvent.”

Last month the board directed its staff to pursue a controversial 5 million-gallon-a-day desalination plant as part of a package of steps to address the county’s water needs.

At a meeting Wednesday the board was to give formal approval to an environmental impact report on desalination and consider securing permits for various facilities to be able to operate a plant. But the item was put off until the March 18 meeting. Now, district officials say it will not appear at that meeting either, and no new date to consider the item has been set.

The delayed issues that were under consideration by the board regarding desalination only move the process forward. A final decision – when to proceed with a design and construct and operate the facility – would come later, possibly not until 2011.

The water board this week reviewed plans for a 7.3 percent rate increase to pay for increased labor, maintenance and other costs. A board vote on the increase is scheduled for April 29.

Koehler was adamant that the planning for desalination has not stalled, but that the delay is only an effort to separate the two issues.

“There is some confusion out there,” she said.

But board member Jack Gibson said he has suggested the board step back from the desalination process for some time.

“I have said we should put the brakes on this,” said Gibson, who supports desalination because it provides Marin with a reliable source of water and reduces dependence on an environmentally sensitive Russian River supply. “We should slow it up a bit.”

Recent testimony on desalination at public hearings has been overwhelmingly negative. But Gibson thinks the district is not hearing from everyone.

“I think we need to hear from citizens who can’t make it to these meetings and see what they think,” he said. “We want people to talk to us. We need to get our arms around this and get a better sense of what the whole county thinks.”

Former Fairfax mayor Frank Egger was pleased to hear the desalination process has been delayed.

“We organized, found our own experts and came up with better solutions than a desal plant on the bay next to a sewer discharge point for Marin’s future water needs,” he said.

Those solutions include more intense conservation efforts.

The desalination plant would take San Rafael Bay water and subject it to various forms of treatment to produce drinkable water through reverse osmosis technology.

The plant would be situated on MMWD-owned land near Pelican Way in San Rafael. Bay water would be piped from an intake near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The plant could be operational by 2014.